Thank you for the opportunity of some mentorship. I’m sorry for the long message but I feel like I have to give good context.
I’m a 43-yr old father of three, I have a bachelor’s degree in computer science. I did some work as a computer support technician at the beginning of my career but later changed to IT sales and did that for 15 years although I hated it but did it because of the money. For the last 3 years.
I’ve been running my own small business selling on Amazon (e-commerce) since 2015. In 2019 I will be moving from the Dominican Republic to Canada so I decided to take that opportunity to make a change of career. I have always liked the idea of programming and creating things with code. I’ve done some PHP programming before so I’m not a total newbie and I also programmed back in college (but haven’t done anything REAL, let’s say). But the logical training is there and I’m good at learning new things and also problem-solving.
I’ve done some research about programming languages in order to decide which way should I go. I want to go with web development and I’ve narrowed it down to Javascript for Front End Dev (w/VUE) and either Python (w/Django) or Ruby (on rails) for the Back End stuff although Javascript (w/Node.js) might help with back-end development.
My strategy will be to start learning with books and free boot camps and then try to develop a real project about something that I’m needing for my e-commerce business and also many other people doing e-commerce on Amazon need it too (so, customers might be interested in that solution in the future). That way I will be forced to quickly learn more things to complete the project.
When I feel more confident with my knowledge I’ll try to go the freelancer route because with age I’m becoming more and more appreciative of my independence but I understand that working for someone in development might be beneficial although it might be difficult to get a job programming in a new country without working experience and speaking a non-native language.
My questions:
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I’ve decided to go with these languages because I found them to be high in demand, with vast learning resources available, relatively easy to learn, and quick for developing a project with their frameworks, etc. What are your thoughts about this selection?
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Is it having a job in the field that important to jumpstart my new career in web development?
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How would you say I should look for freelance work without much experience? Should I offer my service at a lower price at the beginning?
I’ll be more than happy to chat with you and know your thoughts about all of this.
Miguel had problems with appear.in. Had to use Skype instead. Skype username is angelmmontero.
Miguel was very concerned about choosing the right technology. I tried to get him not to worry about this as much. Told him to solve a problem for clients and they won’t care what technology he uses.
Roadmap:
- learn javascript basics
- start building project for his ecommerce business. Let this guide his learning moving forward.
- Find “watering holes” of other ecommerce businesses like his and let them know about his software.